The Linux terminal is well-known for its productivity tools for savvy users, but it also offers ways to be unproductive. You can do fun things as well as programming and shell scripting. You can play games in the terminal. One collection of games, BSD games, is borrowed from games that were popular on one of Linux’s ancestors, BSD. These text-based games were originally developed in the late 1970s and 1980s.
You can still play many of them on modern Linux systems. Everyone needs to take a break from running commands and pipelines once in a while.
While this article covers BSD games, you don’t have to have BSD system. Many Linux systems have this package. On Ubuntu/Debian, it’s called “bsdgames.” To install it, type:
If you’re using another distro, try searching for names like “bsdgames” or “bsd-games” in your package manager. The package comes with lots of games and things that I can only call “not-quite-games.” I tried them out to see how well they hold up today.
1snake
If you ever used a cellphone back in the ’90s, this game might feel familiar to you. It’s not exactly the same as the “snake” game you might have played on those old phones (which was itselfa clone of a game from the 1970s). Instead of playing the snake eating various things, you play a person trying to elude the ASCII art snake while collecting money.
You move around with theHJKL keys, similar to Vi. The gameplay is turn-based, so you have time to contemplate your next move. you’re able to get a hint about where you might want to go. You can warp to a random place on the screen, but you’ll lose some money if you do.
2sail
This game is surprisingly complex for its era. It’s based on an Avalon Hill tabletop game, and it aims to be a realistic simulation of historical nautical battles. The manual page is worth reading for its exposition of historical detail.
Due to time constraints, I was unable to dig too deeply into this, but it might make for a fun weekend. This games has a surprising amount of nautical terms. It’s certainly not a casual game. Things like this make me recognize the ingenuity that went into BSD, even in games.
This game challenged my assumption of these games ascasual “coffee break” games.
3trek
This is an implementation of a classicStar Trekgame that was popular on mainframes around the time BSD was getting started. You can warp around the universe and blow up Klingons. This was obviously developed before the later installments in theStar Trekseries of films and TV shows.
4robots
robotsis a fun ASCII-based game. You play a human who’s being pursued by the titular robots. The justification given is that the robots are just evil, according to the manual page. That’s as much of a plot as you get in these games. You can elude the robots by having them crash into each other and into the debris that results from the collisions. You can also teleport to another part of the map. It’s like a turn-based version ofRobotron 2084.
You can move using the same keys to move in the Vi or Vim editors, which isn’t surprising as BSD came out of UC Berkeley, where both the games and Vi were invented. One of the game’s developers was Ken Arnold, who created the originalRogue, which is the ancestor ofNetHackand other “roguelike” games. As with that classic RPG, this game seems to be a showcase for CRT terminals,which were still pretty new when it was first written.
5hack
Speaking of"roguelikes,“hackis one such game. The game was largely inspired by the originalRogue. It’s a classic dungeon crawler that’s procedurally-generated, so every playthrough is different. You search for the Amulet of Yendor while having the ability to play different character classes. This was hack’soriginal claim to flame.
If the setup makes you think ofNetHack, you’re right. This is actually an early version of that game. While this version is fun, it’s obviously still rough around the edges if you’ve played later versions ofNetHack.The developers even admit that it’s full of bugs in the manual page (the manuals are just as fun to read as playing the games with this collection). You’re probably better off installing a modern version ofNetHackon your system if you want to crawl through the dungeon ASCII-style.
6atc
Ever thought about trying to find a less stressful job? Maybe something more relaxing, like air traffic control? you’re able to get a taste of what it would be like to be an air traffic controller withatc.
You can give instructions for planes to turn, climb, descend, circle, and land. You want to keep them from crashing into each other or leaving your sector of airspace illegally outside of the designated exits at the corner of the screen.
This is probably the most complicated of the BSD games set, and it’s one game I couldn’t quite get the hang of. I remember trying to play a similar game that had been ported to MS-DOS as a kid, so it seems to be yet another classic. At least, the game shows that not pursuing a career in air traffic control might have been the right one for me.
7adventure
This is the classicAdventuregame that was popular on mainframes in the 1970s. As both Adventure and BSD started around the same time, it was perhaps inevitable that a port would emerge for BSD Unix, given that both loom large in geek lore. The goal of the game is simple: you have to explore the Colossal Cave.
The game has left its mark on computer culture in other ways, such as the classic “twisty maze of passages, all alike” in the cave and the magic word “XYZZY.” For these reasons, you might want to play through it to experience an early version of what we now call a “meme.” The game codified many elements of text adventure games, such as movement by compass directions.
8backgammon
This is a version of a classic board game. You can play against the computer or another person. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to play Backgammon. Fortunately, there’s a command called “teachgammon” which has a tutorial on how to play it.
Unfortunately, it would take a longer time to get more comfortable with Backgammon than I would have to work on this article, so I would have to leave it to another time to develop my strategy. The game is about as complex in strategy as Chess is.
9canfield
No computer seems complete without a solitaire game, and it seems that BSD is no exception. This version is based on the classic Canfield variant of solitaire. This was a variant that was played for money in a casino, so it’s harder thanthe Klondike version you might have encountered in Windows.
The key difference for this version compared to other solitaire games is that it’s completely text-based. The card representations are letters or numbers mentioning the rank and suit. For example, the Queen of hearts is “Qh.” The Ace of spades is “As.”
10cribbage
I like card games, but I don’t always have a chance to play with other people, so computerized versions are great for me. One I’ve always wanted to try is Cribbage, and there’s a BSD version. It includes instructions, but I think I’d prefer a modern graphical version for card games. At least I won’t need a Cribbage board.
